A couple of male blue ducks have pretty well done for hopes that the species might propagate in the UK after eschewing the advances of a female in favour of some light boy-on-boy, the Telegraph reports.
The pair of gay drakes - named Ben and Jerry - resisted the advances of female Cherry at Arundel Wetland Centre in West …

Ain't nowt new about it...

...homosexuality in animals is common, ongoing and well documented. Of course, you don't hear about it often in nature documentaries, probably because the broadcaster is worried about the viewer's "sensibilities".

"Roy and Silo, two male chinstrap penguins at New York's Central Park Zoo have been inseparable for six years now. They display classic pair-bonding behavior—entwining of necks, mutual preening, flipper flapping, and the rest. They also have sex, while ignoring potential female mates."

Observed closer to home

We have two male pet rabbits that cuddle each other, clean each other and generally arae far tidier than any of the others. They amke a lovely couple and spur the advances of their amorous female co-habitors.

Here's your chance

That secondary school principal...

Back in secondary school, the vice principal gave us a "lecture" about sexuality, and told us about how homosexuality was unnatural, because there are no homosexual animals. He also told us that the day he ever watched two animals engaging in homosexual sex, would be the day that he would accept gays.

Apart from badly

The Pope........

Which just goes to show...

...that homosexuality isn't very clever, from a Darwinian perspective. Though it's really quite rare for animals to be exclusively homosexual – usually it just seems to be a case of mistaken identity due to raging hormones – so maybe Cherry just isn't their type?

@ Frank

"Cherry has taken the snub pretty well "

Probably a lesbian.

A duck goes into a drug store and asks to buy a tube of Chapstick. The clerk says, "That'll be $1.99." And the duck responds, "Just put it on my bill."

A few hours later, the same duck goes back into the pharmacy and this time tells the clerk that he needs to buy a condom. The clerk sarcastically says, "So, should I put this on your bill?" And the duck says, "Hey, I'm not that kind of duck."

@ Andy

"Which just goes to show ... that homosexuality isn't very clever, from a Darwinian perspective."

Actually, it may in fact be incredibly clever: homosexuality may be an effective way to prevent defective genes from being generationally transmitted and thus dead-ending the gene(s) in question. It's been seriously suggested.

Everyone gets to have great sex with no risk of potentially passing on some combination of devastating inherited disorders.

Sigh

It is a darwinian trait to draw parallels between human and non-human animal behaviour and use it as a model for humans. Any Christian who starts doing that needs to go back to their Bible.

According to the Bible, the difference between humans and all other animals is that humans is that humans were made in "God's likeness." Since God isn't human we can conclude it doesn't mean physical likeness, but that we were made with the ability to make moral decisions, which includes the ability to accept or reject God's leadership.

Come on peeps...

Of course its unatural! The whole point of having two different sexes is to produce children

by natures perpective. Unless of course your telling me this is envolution and that it was aiming

for homosexual people and animals.

Organisms on this planet , especially high up the scale are incredible complex requirin billions

of chemical reactions to go off correctly, its no wonder that occasionly the wiring goes wrong,

like people being born , beath, blind, nutters, whatever, sometimes we comeout not quite right.

However the difference is that we need not care because the the number of animals and people that are wired correctly allow the species to compensate for those that do not. Nature is resillent and allows us to absorbthe minor percentage that dont get built correctly.

Simply put the chances of there being 10% of the male population being either gay or with serious

homesexual tendencies is simply laughable, mother nature and evolution are just way to good at

the job, They've been doing thier double act for billions of years.

Paris because she does not mind if some like a little bob on boy action

Perhaps...

They need to think it through

I think this is going to be good for creating a population of blue ducks in this country. Now there has been some publicity, there will be blue ducks moving to tunbridge wells and writing to the times about how disgusted they are and how there was none of this gayness when they were young ducks, heterosexual young ducks arguing whether cherry is a minger or not and sending her for style makeovers on blue duck tv channels, more gay ducks moving to the area to be part of the vibrant gay duck culture, blue duck outreach workers will need to be employed to deal with problems in the growing blue duck community.......

Ducks? On Water?

Re: Which just goes to show

Andy says "Which just goes to show... that homosexuality isn't very clever, from a Darwinian perspective. Though it's really quite rare for animals to be exclusively homosexual – usually it just seems to be a case of mistaken identity due to raging hormones – so maybe Cherry just isn't their type?"

Homosexuality has been observed in over 1500 species (including humans:-) as you can see in this article: http://www.news-medical.net/?id=20718

Why do you think "homosexuality isn't very clever, from a Darwinian perspective"? Is this just an uninformed opinion? Or do you base it on some grounded beliefs? I can't provide any references but I do know that some researchers believe there is a benefit to having a certain percentage of homosexual individuals within a species. The benefit is that a "gay uncle" (or "lesbian aunt") won't be distracted by child rearing responsibilities and so can act as an extra food gatherer, thus increasing the chances of survival for nephews and nieces. If a species has "too many" homosexual individuals then there won't be sufficient breeding and the population may die out. Conversely, if there are "too few" homosexual individuals then the population may die out due to heterosexual parents not being able to acquire sufficient food to feed all their offspring.

As for your claim that "it's really quite rare for animals to be exclusively homosexual", again I am curious if this is just an uninformed opinion or do you have some basis for it. By the way, according to the Kinsey reports in 1948 and 1953, exclusive heterosexuality is much less common than most people imagine.

@ Andy

"homosexuality isn't very clever, from a Darwinian perspective"

You're not very clever, from any perspective, if you think that statement made any sense. What the fuck is a "Darwinian perspective"? Do you mean simply to point out that a male/male coupling won't produce offspring? Bravo, Einstein.

"it's really quite rare for animals to be exclusively homosexual – usually it just seems to be a case of mistaken identity due to raging hormones"

Show your working, please. Or to put it another way, what a steaming pile of made up bollocks.

Re: Come on peeps...

So... it's a defect, you're saying? And we should feel compassion for them, or perhaps fear them a bit, and either way at least stare at them in the street until our mums tell us not to be so rude? Still, they get by OK in spite of their disability - their fashion sense becomes stronger, apparently, to compensate for their lack of breeding ability.

Evolutaionary Strategies

@Andy

On the contrary, homosexuality is a very sound evolutionary strategy: it maintains social co-operation while ensuring that the species doesn't breed to the limit of available resources. This is why homosexuality is so common in the animal kingdom (Bruce Bagemhil's book "Biological Exuberance" identifies over 450 species which can have gay/lesbian couples). You're right that it is not a sound DARWINIAN strategy, but that's because the Darwinian idea of absolute competition for resources doesn't tie in with the fact that most species don't breed to the limit of available resources.